by Keary Taylor
Chapter Eleven
Dean Lowell got to his office every weekday at seven AM. I knew that because I’d known the man my entire life. He’d come to family Christmas parties and Easter Sunday dinner. I’d been to his house dozens of times for faculty parties and even went for the wake for his wife when she died four years ago.
I knew his habits well.
So, I woke up early the next morning, leaving Nathaniel still sleeping in my bed. I dressed in the bathroom and slipped downstairs before Dad had even gotten up. I pulled on my coat, and I set out across the crunchy, frozen grounds.
I made my way down the silent halls, occupied only by the day shift janitor, Paul. I turned the corner and saw the heavy wooden door at the end. Confidently, I knocked.
“Come in,” his deep voice boomed from inside.
I turned the knob, and walked in.
“Margot,” Dean Lowell greeted me with a surprised, but warm smile. “This is quite the surprise. How are you?”
“I’m fine,” I said as I took a step inside. “How’s Barnabus?”
That was his cat, a grumpy ancient thing with only one eye and one and a half ears. He had a habit of going out into town at night and getting into fights.
“Getting ornerier by the day,” the Dean chuckled. Dean Lowell didn’t have any of his own children, so Barnabus was as close as it got, and it showed.
I smiled and took another step closer toward his desk. “I came here this morning because I wanted to talk to you about Borden Stewart.”
Instantly, Dean Lowell’s expression grew a little darker. “Why?”
I took yet another step closer into the office. “Borden didn’t cheat, and he didn’t go and change his grades,” I said, pushing confidence into every word I spoke. “I don’t know if you are aware, but Borden recently left the Society Boys, and there’s been a falling out because of it. I think David Sinclair has taken it quite personally. He’s been at Borden’s throat ever since.”
Dean Lowell braced his elbows on his desk and clasped his hands together. “While I am sorry to hear there has been contention between Borden and David, I did not base my decision on anything said from David. I went off of the word of Borden’s professor. He showed me the grades himself.”
“But there weren’t any sure signs that it was Borden who did it,” I pointed out.
“With declining grades, Borden seems to be the only one who has reason to do so,” Lowell came back.
“I have reason to believe that the Society Boys are sabotaging Borden,” I said, taking another step closer. “They’re going after him, personally. They’re trying to destroy his life because he made the decision to step away from them. Would you take any of that knowledge into consideration and possibly overturn his expulsion?”
Dean Lowell’s eyes darkened and I saw that he was taking me less and less seriously by the moment.
Which made me feel less bad for what I was about to do.
“My decision is final, Margot,” he said, his voice firming with each passing moment. “You are a good friend to Borden for coming here on his behalf, but I’m afraid I can’t do anything different.”
I sighed. “I was afraid you would say that.”
He sat back in his seat just a little as I stepped forward, closing the distance between us. But he didn’t get a chance to do much of anything else before I placed my fingers to his temples and closed my eyes.
Instantly, he was still.
I brought up my own recollection of the event, even though I had no connection to it. I dove into Lowell’s mind, searching for the instance of the professor coming to him and telling him about Borden’s cheating on the test, and about his grade changing. I felt the memory pulse and quiver as I pushed my will into it.
And then the memory broke. Cracks formed, and I slipped inside.
I put it in Lowell’s memory that the professor did come to him. He did tell him about the cheating and the grade changing. But Lowell investigated the matter himself. He went to Borden, he interrogated the Society Boys, and he got them to confess that they were trying to sabotage Borden.
Dean Lowell cleared Borden. He knew Borden had done nothing wrong.
And then I planted it in his mind that he needed to write two letters. One to the economics professor that Borden was cleared, and the second to Borden himself, saying that his expulsion was reversed, and he could finish out the semester in good standing.
I paused there, with my fingertips pressed into Lowell’s temples. I searched to be sure that I’d done everything I could. That I’d altered his memories solid and deep.
And then I released the Dean.
He blinked several times, looking around the room slightly confused. I walked back to the door, pausing there.
“Forgive me, Margot,” Lowell said. “I seem to have spaced out for a moment. If you’ll excuse me, I have a few letters I need to write.”
“Of course,” I said with a nod and a small smile. I ducked out of the office and closed the door behind me.
I waited just down the hall where I still had a good view of his door. Ten minutes went by and then twenty. Twenty-five minutes later, his door finally opened. He held two envelopes in his hand.
He immediately cut down the hall and I sprang to my feet to follow him.
He first went to the professor’s office. He walked right in and I waited outside where I could barely hear their words. Lowell explained that he’d looked into the matter and determined Borden wasn’t at fault and he’d been falsely accused. The professor seemed confused and surprised, but what could he do? He couldn’t overturn the Dean’s decision.
I waited down the hall until Lowell walked back out and headed toward the front doors. I followed behind as he walked out the doors and cut across the grass toward the dorm where Borden lived. I stayed out of sight as he knocked on the door and waited for one of the students who answered to slip back in.
One minute later, Borden appeared at the door. His hair was a mess and he wore an old Alderidge sweater and pajama pants. I couldn’t hear the words Dean Lowell spoke, but I watched as Borden’s eyes grew wide with surprise and then his expression filled with gratitude. A big smile broke out on his face, and I realized then, that I’d never seen Borden really smile before.
It was nice.
Dean Lowell shook Borden’s hand and patted him on the shoulder. And then he turned and headed back to Alderidge.
Borden looked up from the letter in his hand, and just then, his eyes met mine.
I gave him a little smile and Borden lost his. We just looked at each other for several long moments. And then Borden nodded at me, his lips pressed into a thin line, the message of thank you received.
It was a truce. A show of forgiveness. I’d never forget. But I was ready to put it in the past and stop bringing it up.
With another nod, I turned, and I walked back to the university’s doors.
When I walked out of my humanities class, Borden was waiting across the hall. I walked to him, a thin-lipped smile on my face.
“Thank you,” he said as he stood straight. “You didn’t have to do any of that, and I know I don’t deserve it. But I really appreciate what you did.”
I nodded. “Look, I’m never going to forget that night. It was the second worst night of my life, only coming in after my mother disappeared and I realized she might not ever come back. So, there might always be a dark cloud when it comes to that night.”
I looked down at the ground, and I tried very, very hard to dispel that night from my thoughts, but there was blood and sea water in the back of my mind.
“But I’m moving past it now,” I said as I looked back up at him. “I’m deciding to trust you and to accept that you are a part of this family now.”
He started to say something, but I cut him off. “Just know, that if you ever turn against us, I know things you don’t. And I won’t hesitate to use them to protect myself and Nathaniel and my father.”
I expected Borden to call
me out for threatening him, because it was a threat, and a warning.
“I won’t let you down,” is all he said instead.
So, I just gave a nod and together, we turned down the hallway. “How would you like to learn how to alter memories?” I offered in peace.
Chapter Twelve
The beginning of March, we had an extended weekend with Friday off. So, the four of us made plans.
We borrowed Dad’s car and piled in with our packed bags. Mary-Beth brought snacks, even though we weren’t going all that far on this road trip. And then we pointed north and headed into the city.
We parked where we could find parking in the sprawling city that I adored so much. I slipped my hand into Nathaniel’s and gawked and stared as we walked down the sidewalks of Boston. I took in the churches and the old brick buildings. I smiled at the masses of people walking in a hurry, none of them ever making eye contact.
“I don’t get it,” Nathaniel said as he looked over at me, smirking at my happiness at walking around, surrounded by a million strangers.
“It’s just different, even though we’re only a few miles from home,” I said, sighing. “Don’t you feel the history here?”
“Harrington was founded in 1692,” Nathaniel said. “There’s plenty of history there.”
“Sixty-two years is a whole generation,” Mary-Beth pointed out with sarcasm.
“In all seriousness,” Borden said as he walked behind us. “Boston and Harrington look nothing alike, architecture wise. Most of these buildings are hundreds of years older than Harrington’s. No brick or stone. No cobblestones. Just houses and newer businesses. And Alderidge.”
“Fine, I’ll give you that,” Nathaniel said with a smile. “I can appreciate the architecture.”
Speaking of, we rounded the corner just then and came to the front steps of the Boston Public Library, the second largest in the country.
I smiled in giddy anticipation and looked back at the others. Each of them pulled on a pair of thin gloves and pulled out their pencils, ready to find more magical books. I reached into my own pocket and pulled on my gloves as well.
We walked up the stairs and immediately went to pick up a map. We split the library in half, with all of the rooms and halls covered by teams. Nathaniel with me, and Mary-Beth with Borden. With a nod and an agreement to meet back outside on the steps in three hours, we went our separate ways.
Nathaniel and I headed to the rooms we were to cover, and I just hoped we didn’t draw any attention.
“We really should probably hit the Harvard Library as well someday,” Nathaniel said as we worked our way through the first room. We ran our pencils along the spines, watching over our shoulders to be sure no one was watching.
“You really think so?” I asked as I paid close attention.
“It’s a huge library,” Nathaniel said as he moved along. “And it’s in the same region. I don’t know why there would be more at Alderidge than there.”
“Is their library open to the public?” I asked.
“The special collections, archives, and government documents are,” Nathaniel said. “Which is likely the majority of what we’d want to investigate anyway. And who knows, maybe someday we’ll recruit a mage who’s a student there.”
It actually made me nervous, the thought of expanding our circle. Excited, yes. But who knew what the dynamic would be like as we expanded? So far it worked with Borden and Mary-Beth. But what if we found some jerk or some stuck up princess who didn’t think like we did? We were putting ourselves in danger with each invitation we extended.
But the more people we had on board, the quicker our work would progress.
We worked our way through this room and then moved on to the next.
My hand started getting tired and cramped as I held my pencil so carefully. I switched to the left and rang my right out, opening and closing my hand.
The library really was beautiful. Old and historic, it was absolutely one of my favorite parts about Boston. Even though it had only been built in 1852, there was something about ancient books and the wisdom they held that made it feel older. Some buildings just have a feeling in them. This library was one of them.
As we moved onto the sixth room, I felt my heart beginning to sink.
“What if we don’t find anything here, Nathaniel?” I asked as my shoulders slumped. We walked from one room to the next. “Or what if what we’re looking for is locked up in the special sections behind glass?”
“It seems nearly impossible to me that we won’t find something,” he answered. And from his tone, I could tell he was getting frustrated. “We found several books at Alderidge. This library is about eight times bigger. The odds just don’t seem right.”
“I mean, my mother was coming here regularly and going through all these books,” I said as we stepped into the next room. I dropped my voice. “Maybe she already found everything there was to find here.”
“It seems unlikely,” Nathaniel said as he held up his pencil. “Considering we have a much easier method than having to read through all seventeen million books that exist within these walls.”
He was right. But I was simply trying to make us feel better.
At twenty minutes to the time we were supposed to meet back out front, Nathaniel and I stepped into the last room.
These were foreign language books. There were quite a variety of them. And they varied in age quite a bit from the look of the spines.
I let go of hope. We weren’t going to find anything here. Mom had already found everything there was to find. We would move on from the library empty handed.
Shelf after shelf, we moved through the books. My pencil stayed looking exactly like a pencil. All of these books were just that—books. Every one of them held their own kind of magic, just not the kind we needed.
Nathaniel and I got closer and closer. We’d started on opposite ends of the room and slowly worked our way toward the middle.
I let out a sigh as I came to the end of the last shelf.
But suddenly Nathaniel froze.
I looked over my shoulder.
And like a miracle, the wand in his hand was glowing blue.
He looked over at me, his eyes filled with wonder and relief. I jumped to his side and he pulled the book off the shelf and immediately flipped it open.
It was written in a language I didn’t even recognize. The characters didn’t make sense to me, and it certainly wasn’t Latin based.
“You recognize this at all?” I asked.
Nathaniel shook his head and looked up. There was a woman working at the desk at the entry way of the room, bent over a volume. He crossed to her.
“Excuse me,” he said as he opened the book and laid it down on the counter. “Can you tell me what language this is written in?”
She peered at Nathaniel from over her reading glasses. She seemed annoyed at being disturbed, but she pushed her book aside and pulled Nathaniel’s closer to her. She closed the book and looked at the spine.
“Sanskrit,” she pronounced and pushed the book back toward Nathaniel.
He muttered a thank you and requested to check it out. The woman continued to act annoyed at the disturbance, but she did her job and stamped a card that said the book was due back in two weeks.
Little did she know that we were most likely never going to return it.
“I don’t even know where Sanskrit is from,” I confessed as we walked out of the room and started making our way back toward the front doors.
“The middle east,” Nathaniel said. “Though it’s largely considered a dead language. Only a few people in Nepal claim it anymore.”
I shook my head, both at the ridiculousness of that, and that Nathaniel knew the information off the top of his head. “I don’t suppose you know this particular language.”
“Not at all,” he said. I could feel the gears turning in his head. “I don’t think any of the professors at Alderidge know it either. There are no courses at our school.
We really might have to make a trip to Harvard sometime, just to see if they have anyone who knows it.”
We walked between the lion statues in the main entry way and then down the stairs to the front doors.
Mary-Beth and Borden were waiting outside already, hugging their coats tight to themselves to keep warm.
“Nothing?” I asked in shock, noting their empty hands.
“Nothing,” Borden confirmed, and I could see the disappointment in him in his shoulders.
“And what we found is in a dead language very, very few people still know,” Nathaniel said in a frustrated huff as he held up the book.
I was trying very, very hard to not let out all my frustrations. I wanted to vent and rage that this was impossible. Trying to recover every magical book in the world was just too much. It was too big for us.
But I kept my mouth shut.
“Come on,” Mary-Beth said wisely. “We all need food. No use us all getting hangry.”
She led us to a sandwich and soup shop she’d been to before. We ordered and all sat at a table by the window that looked out onto the busy street.
“I was joking before, saying that my mother probably picked through every magical book that was here,” I said as I picked at my roll while we waited for our food. “But maybe she truly did. She had years of combing through that library.”
No one really said anything, because we were all thinking the same thing. She missed four books at Alderidge, and she had access to that library every single day.
“We’re more likely to find something in Salem,” I said, trying to sound confident, to bring up the mood in the room. “We know there were two witches there, maybe more. There has to be something real left over in that town.”
“I’ve never been to Salem before,” Mary-Beth said. I felt the forced excitement in her voice, and I appreciated that she was trying to pick up the mood. “Think we can go find the sites where they hung the witches?”
“Those were your literal ancestors,” Borden said, glaring at her. “You really want to see where they were murdered?”